


fear

by aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Anxiety, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Psychological, possible PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 04:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm/pseuds/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm
Summary: Kalluto saysWhy are you so intent on killing him?Illumi answersBecause it’s my job.





	fear

Kalluto says _Why are you so intent on killing him?_

Illumi answers _Because it’s my job._

Kalluto frowns, the ceramic doll brother that he is, a sibling who Illumi didn’t get to raise.

He looks like Illumi did when he was thirteen, chasing after after-echos of irksome laughter, fire-gleaming and starving windows wide open to the unknown that beckoned, that keep beckoning, over and over, through floors and tiers and walls and rooms and distance and the sea itself, and Illumi turns the tense mass of his back on Zoldyck eyes, cold sweat dripping down his hairline, to walk out of the room they were assigned to.

Illumi is anxious. Illumi hides it, the shattering anxiety, under the darkness of his eyes and the long bangs of his curtain hair; he pulls at them, twists the ebony strands between fingers that are more bone than skin, and he bites at whatever skin there is left on his sickly looking fingers, leaves bleeding imprints, munches on the same old and new crusts, the same ugly bruises, the disgusting and festering cuts, tastes his own blood while he watches phantom people pass him by.

He thinks. Thinks. Thinks— second by second, minute by minute, instants impatiently tapping their shoes. 

_Phantom._

His legs abandon him in favor of approaching the vending machine at the end of the corridor. Eyeless eyes follow him. He stares without looking at the rows of bags of junk food and healthy, bland energy bars, but teeth find tongue at the sight of a lonely pack of gum at the bottom row. His stomach rumbles, hungry. His hand hovers near the selection pad.

Small touch on his shoulder. Illumi should have sensed it sooner, the smell of Mother’s garden of roses stuck in a tight embrace with the brimstone and acid sweat that clings to the members of the Spider.

Kalluto reaches a hand forward, a cookie nestled in his little rosy palm. _You shouldn’t eat that, Illu-nii. Have this instead._

Illumi glares at the treat and his vision shakes the tiniest bit, just enough that his head feels like rolling off. That slippery sign of weakness has him enraged and full of fire, and he can’t stop the aggressiveness with which he snatches the cookie; it crumbles in his grasp, slightly, crumbs like hourglass sand falling to his feet. His nails are blue and dimmed, chopped carelessly, too close to tender flesh. He hasn’t been eating well. He takes a bite and tastes the reek of his own saliva.

 _It’s unhealthy_ , Kalluto adds, he notices that the older brother doesn’t immediately take a second bite, pours more salt into the proverbial wound, and Illumi feels like they’re having two different conversations at once.

He eyes the vending machine with a yearning too deep to be described in simple and limited words. Before he can think too much on it, he is punching the numbers on the pad and making his ownership of the last pack of gum official. It’s artificial, sweet, non-nutritious and entirely Illumi’s; the thought paints a ghostly sketch of a smile on his gaunt and papery face, as he gazes at the metallic coloring of the wrapping, and a frown on Kalluto’s.

_You shouldn’t—_

_I don’t care. I will decide what is good for me_ Illumi sentences, sounding less solemn, sounding more whiny and pathetic than he would have liked.

_You are not making the right choice._

_The right choice, Kalluto? Do not forget that joining the Spiders has not changed who you are. You are still a Zoldyck. I am still your older brother. Do not presume to know better than me._

That silences him, and Illumi hopes he is thinking of Father’s throttling hold, Mother’s loving claws on a cheek, Zeno’s ever amused glances, and the dank smell of the dungeons.

Illumi has deadly dreams, rotten dreams of red, blue, fuchsia, pink, gold, purple and green buried under piles and piles of rubble, forever forgotten to the world like the statues, monuments, buildings and art that at their prime had been testaments to the history of mankind, only to be left behind to be swallowed by the elements, and if greatness can be forgotten, Illumi dreams of that moment every day, that breathless moment in which nobody cares, everyone forgets, life walks right on by, and he is still on the burial site where the sun was eclipsed, unmoving, what was lost screaming memories into numb eardrums, hands helplessly clawing at stone, broken cement and remains of thriving forces, seeking for the impossible among the wreckage.

In his dreams is where the ill signs on his hands are born, as hours sneak past his consciousness and the work of his bare fingers is interrupted by the presence of naked wires, sharp borders, his fingers are harmed by debris, decimated structures, but he doesn’t care about the tears of his skin, nor the sizzling spills of blood wherever he touches, cares for nothing that isn’t the goal, the most important thing, the dark omen of a smirk and the wrong intentions carried through the joyful curving of sly eyes and a shock of vigorous color to remind Illumi of what it feels like to tread on a knife’s edge.

He can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t kill, can’t breathe, can’t do anything that will not fail to remind him of his feverish dreams.

Illumi remembered his dreams when Chrollo’s hand met his in a handshake. _Welcome to the Troupe._ The desperation of holding his breath underwater, determination akin to that of a madman on a fool’s errand. Anger as old and timeless as human sin. He looks at Kalluto as he is now and experiences that complicated cocktail of toxic feelings that ache to rip him apart from within.

He wishes he could summon the makeup of confidence he donned back in that room, sitting at that table, facing them all together, cradling his venom coated hurt, and putting aside the illusory voice saying, _I want to destroy them. I want you to destroy me._

Back in the present his youngest brother claims coldly _Mother will be disappointed. She never cared much for sweets._

Illumi almost laughs, pocketing the gum, crushing the cookie underneath his heel. He is not thinking of Mother.

He leans against a wall, lets his weight sink to the floor. Kalluto looks at him like Illumi is defying everything he has ever considered undisputable truth.

 _Mother never cared either for her children leaving_ Illumi states, a vacant hole where his notions used to drive him _Yet here we are. Killua was the first to leave, it didn’t take long for you to fall in his footsteps…_

_And what about you? Aren’t you leaving right now? By doing this? Have you forgotten about Killua already?_

No. Never.

But he wasn’t thinking of Killua either, wasn’t he, when the decision was made? He hasn’t thought of him at all. Can’t think of him, or he might hesitate.

His family— a hazy fantasy, heavy baggage that couldn’t board The Black Whale along with him, not where sinking to the bottom of the sea is more than a mere possibility.

_I am not leaving. I have a job. It is my duty to see it through._

Kalluto, unused to not having his way, turns an aggravated shade of red. Illumi lies _The time to bring  Killua back home will come after._

Kalluto clicks his tongue, all brat and nothing like Illumi was taught to be at his age, snarls _Gon would have destroyed Killua._

Illumi is tempted to pretend he doesn’t know what Kalluto means by that, but he is too tired, his head is drumming loudly from severe starvation, stress and restrained fury to try and play a part he can no longer play.

_I know, that is why I tried, Kalluto. I tried to stop him._

_Not hard enough, brother. You know exactly what it was that **stopped** you. Illu-nii, you have always been running, haven’t you? You say you are not leaving, you are not running, but you were the first to look at bright and dazzling things and want for them._

He tastes a mouthful of sudden and rash frustration, like he hasn’t allowed himself to feel for weeks. Brushing the nervous sweat from his forehead—the clock on the wall is ticking, ticking, ticking, marking the time that has been spent and _he_ has not been discovered yet, and Illumi hasn’t ceased staring the device to death—Illumi growls _I am the only one who cares, the only one who has tried to keep this family together through thick and thin. For your benefit, I hope you are not implying what I think you are._

 _No!_ Kalluto exclaims _You were selfish. You have always known you would have to choose eventually. In your selfishness, you wanted to have both. But it’s too late and you have chosen wrong. You are the one who will tear our family apart, and for what?!_

For what, huh?

He sighs, giving out his last noise of complaint, and closes his eyes.

Out there, he is still out there, and Illumi can’t help but wonder if he is scared, if he was scared then, alone in the dark with his hateful thoughts and the scars from a tumultuous childhood that showed him pain, failure, rejection and little else, if he was terrified of the insidious emptiness that took over his limbs, if he thought himself alone, if he cursed his fate, if he hated himself for failing and if he doubted, at that eternal instant, the violent and power-hungry philosophy he had so fervently defended and abided by throughout the long years?

Illumi gathers the strength to stand and sidesteps the delicate frame of Kalluto in order to head for the common bathroom in a last ditch attempt at freshening his decaying appearance. It might have been a mistake—the space is too small and he nearly suffocates from the confining dimensions of it.

When he opens the water tab, a flow of crimson liquid pools inside his cupped hands. He blinks, stunned, and it’s gone in a second, the visceral imagining of blood, leaving normal and clear water to wet his palms.

Kalluto is waiting for him at the door and immediately pounces on him as he exits.

_Whatever you think you are doing, it won’t work. Danchou will win in the end. You must know that._

Illumi grits his teeth and firmly vows, against the drop of his heartbeat and the shaking of his hands, that he will not allow that to happen. Ever.

_Nii-sama, you will receive your reward no matter what the outcome is. Let it go._

That face, broken. The sound of his voice and the warmth of his touch and the annoyance ingrained into his voice and everything he says, nearly gone—and it makes Illumi question, it makes Illumi rethink what he understood of Killua and It and Kalluto, it makes him too willing to shove his hands into a pyre and witness the destruction caused by fire.

It makes Illumi decide to put a veil over his dead eyes and take a leap of faith, straight into the abyss.

_Let it go or help us._

Chrollo will make it hurt in ways the man can’t begin to comprehend. Chrollo won’t care. To Chrollo, it’s only a matter of what was done to Shalnark and Kortopi, of ending the pest that caused it. To Illumi, it’s so much more than revenge. It goes beyond his bloodlust growing poisonous when Chrollo stood near, or spoke, or said _his_ name, and goes beyond wanting to put his head on a spike, choke him with his own entrails, force him to pay with blood and everything he cares for in exchange for what he did, for what he almost took from Illumi, what he is threatening to take again.

 _Why do you want to be the one to kill Hisoka so badly?_ Kalluto asks once more, finally being true to the loving fragility yelling at him to speak up.

Heartbroken and torn: a young boy asking his older brother to live, to run and live.

Illumi shake his head, butterflies on his chest and mouth.

_Because he doesn’t understand death the way I do. You didn’t see him, that day, Kalluto. No one but me did. He was…_

The opposite of being alive. Dead, even though he was breathing and functioning and standing in front of Illumi, his hair a messy nest of mildly curled locks, his lips mirthless and serious, his penetrating gaze sunken and lost and not like himself at all. Illumi had harshly taken him by the wrist as an excuse to feel the stammering pulse denouncing life, and remembering the days before, when he had sat on the windowsill of a hotel room struggling to define what was relevant or not, why he should feel or not, why should he picture his arms trespassing balcony glass seemlessly, soon followed by accepting legs, head and torso, at Last prepared to submit to what they would have not dared to before the weakening echo of Hisoka's presence transformed into the obscurest monster inside Illumi's tortured mind--it had dawned on him, suddenly. There was nothing worse. There could never be anything worse than reaching fingers, peeling and bloody, the explosiveness of Hisoka's silence, the thought of somebody else-- uncaring of Hisoka, of what Hisoka needs, what he wants-- tainting his ultimate wish with unworthy meaning.

Kalluto hiccups, wiping with a long sleeve the humid corners of his big, red-rimmed and helpless eyes.

_What will you do, if anyone in the Troupe gets in your way?_

Illumi grins, full-toothed, childish and trembling, unhealthy-seeming, gaunt cheeks, grey and stretched skin, faded eyes, resigned heart tied to the soles of his shoes, _“I am an honest man, Kalluto. Truthfully, I do not know.”_

He says that, but Illumi is already dreaming of death, as the clock in his head keeps on ticking.


End file.
